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Since it's a mix, you might want to try the Epson V700 (around $530 at Amazon over the V750. The V750 is really only necessary if you are planning on getting into wet/fluid mounting. It sounds like you might be familiar with doing that, but you have to factor in your time and the effort. The V700 is pretty loving nice and is probably the last of the "prosumer" scanners you'll see. Everybody is getting out of the mid-range/prosumer scanning market and sticking to either really cheap/all-in-one or the high-end very expensive. It handles prints as well as a large variety of film/negative/slides/etc. Here's a couple of really in-depth reviews of the V700: http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/V700/V700.HTM If you go the V700 route, hit up BetterScanning.com and grab the appropriate film holders. I have a set for an older scanner and they are so much nicer than the ones that come from Epson. Grab the ANR glass as well, for flattening out curled/warped film. Epson has a V600 that is cheaper (Amazon has it for under $215), but it sounds like you want to do it once at the best quality you can. You can also try and get a used Epson 4990 which is the previous version of the V700. Whatever you do, check out VueScan - there is a free demo. I've messed with Silverfast plus the default Canon and Epson software and VueScan is a lot better and easier to use. tonelok fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 24, 2010 |
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May 24, 2010 23:07
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Forgot to mention, if you go with an online service, be so loving careful with it and do a lot of research. I'm trying to find it, but I came across an article that mentioned one vintage photo scanning place sends the photos off to India. I would not trust these kinds of photos/film to being shipped overseas. I'd be paranoid about any company not willing to insure and track everything there and back just here in the states. e: If you send them off, I would seriously do them in batches so that if something does go wrong or is lost, you don't lose everything. I'm not trying to scare you, but just be careful. This is stuff that would be really bad to lose. e2: Some places even advertise that they don't send photos off to India or elsewhere. tonelok fucked around with this message at 23:15 on May 24, 2010 |
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May 24, 2010 23:09
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Tempted to start a new thread, but this one will do. Because I got involved in a side project scanning 35mm film and slides, I ended up picking the Plustek 7600i dedicated film scanner for around $370 or so (Amazon). It's $370 because it doesn't come with the high-end SilverFast software and it doesn't come with an IT-8 calibration target, which the $500+ version of the 7600i has. I have and use VueScan and have no desire to go mucking around with Silverfast software, and I'm not too concerned about calibration of the scanner. Everything else I have is calibrated. Reviews: http://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm7600i.html http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/PLTK7600/7600.HTM When I get it, I'll post pictures, and some sample scans and a review. There's liable to be somebody interested - unless you are willing to spend upwards of $1500 for used dedicated scanners from Nikon or Minolta, Plustek is pretty much it in the affordable price range. Plustek is probably the only company left still making dedicated film scanners for consumers/prosumers, which is kind of a shame. I was very tempted to pick up a Nikon Coolscan since those things, even used, hold their value big time. I've seen models that cost more used than they did originally new, since they aren't being made anymore. I went with Plustek because the quality of the film I'm going to be scanning isn't too high to begin with, thanks to it being used in fairly cheap consumer-type cameras and a lot of it was developed in one-hour labs, and the people I'm doing this for don't need anything bigger than 8"x10" Also, the price. I've got an Epson 4990 flatbed, but I've not been too happy with film scanning on it (even with glass inserts) and I like the portability of the 7600i (it even comes with a bag). In the meantime, here are some images (500+) of the 7600i in action, from people who have posted on flickr (it is flickr and so there is some compression, especially when people don't allow for anything larger than 1024): http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=7600i&w=all individual samples (pulled at random, some are huge): http://www.flickr.com/photos/44275470@N03/4099875935/sizes/o/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/44275470@N03/4236257685/sizes/o/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/44275470@N03/4205756626/sizes/o/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregoryniss/4719486360/sizes/o/
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Jul 1, 2010 21:44
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It was going to be too expensive to have it commercially done, and the scanner is small enough I can have it sitting near my keyboard, so that's not going to be a problem. In this instance, I'll setup VueScan how I want, hit the scan button, advance a frame, hit the scan button, advance a frame, etc. and it's not a big problem since I can be doing other work at the same time. I'm also buying a few extra film trays so I can load them while one is in the scanner.
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Jul 2, 2010 00:10
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I got the Plustek 7600i yesterday afternoon and will post photos of it later, along with samples. For now, some quick impressions: Amazon packaged it loving horribly. The box was just slightly too small so when they taped it shut, the top of it was kind of in an arc, and the single strip of tape they used to close the lid had broken on one side because of that. Also, it had some o that paper padding on two sides of the box so basically the box was in contact with the shipping box on four sides of the box and the shipping box was banged up (thanks UPS  ). Thankfully Plustek had the actually scanner in foam inserts and it seems to have survived just fine. I wish I had gotten it through NewEgg, but it works.It comes with a really nice, padded carrying case that holds the scanner, USB cable, power supply, and film/slide trays. The scanner itself is smaller than a loaf of bread length-wise, but otherwise pretty close in size to one. USB is not as much of a problem as I thought it would be. Having had nothing but Firewire scanners for the past 5 years or so, I thought it might be a problem. Scanning speed is pretty good overall. Manual feeding is not a problem. I can see where adding automatic feeding would have added drastically to the size/cost/complexity of the device. Speaking of feeding, the negative holder is much better than what I had on my flatbed - much more secure. It feels faster because you're only doing one frame at a time, unlike with my flatbed where it's preview the whole strip, zoom in on one frame, scan, then preview the whole strip again, zoom in on one frame, etc. They seriously need to pack two of each tray in this thing, I'm going to have to definitely order another tray or two. I hate the fact that the driver is somehow directly bundled into the Silverfast software and you have to install Silverfast to get the driver. Plustek does not make the driver available on their website (nor any OS X driver for any of the scanners in this series). I love Vuescan and have never liked Silverfast and it's annoying to have to install 100MB of software I don't need just to get the driver. Feels like HP  The infrared cleaning is really good, better than my flatbed. Even on the "heavy" setting, it's still relatively fast and looks great. My only regret is that I didn't pick up one of the Nikons or Minoltas years ago when they were still being made. Because they are no longer in production, used prices are ridiculous, but the quality of this is really good.
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Jul 7, 2010 18:09
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I'm behind on this, but here are some test scans I did tonight. These have obviously been drastically shrunk and compressed so that they aren't huge. This was all done with VueScan, and were only resized in Photoshop - nothing else. There is a lot that could be done in Photoshop to make them better images obviously. These were made from Kodak Kodachrome 35mm from 1972. This is without anything turned on - straight up scan:  Click here for the full 1900x1271 image. This is with Heavy infrared cleaning, sharpening, light grain reduction, and color restoration, and fading restoration:  Click here for the full 1900x1271 image. This is the infrared layer, so you can get an idea of what it looks like:  Click here for the full 1217x789 image. The cleaning is a lot better than on my Epson 4990. This could save a lot of time. As far as manual feed - not a problem. I've got it on my desk sitting next to my displays. If I were doing this on a flatbed scanner, I'd be moving the mouse around to preview, crop, etc. between slides, so the manual thing is not a big deal. No need for zooming in/out, just move the slide tray up one. e: These were done at 3600dpi and turned out 80MB TIFF files, but you could easily get away with 2400 - some people say that it's not much more than 2400. I was just curious to see how fast and how big the images would be. tonelok fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Jul 10, 2010 |
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Jul 10, 2010 05:38
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This is another test sample - same deal - Kodak Kodachrome 35mm from 1972 Without anything done:  Click here for the full 1900x1273 image. Heavy infrared cleaning, Restore colors, Restore fading, Light grain reduction, Sharpening:  Click here for the full 1900x1273 image.
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Jul 10, 2010 05:43
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Not the best photos, but here's the scanner front - not much to it: From the side - iPhone and the slide tray for comparison   It's very light and the carrying case is perfect - holds everything - compartment for USB cable and A/AC adapter, and a special compartment for the slide and film holders. I'll be ordering another one or two each of the holders (probably runs around $25-$30 for a set). Not that it matters, but in case anybody is curious, this is probably the camera that took the photos I scanned above:  Click here for the full 1518x1050 image.  Click here for the full 1236x1080 image.  Click here for the full 1900x1118 image. I found it this afternoon when I was going through boxes of photos looking for more slides and negatives, and it was the only one that seemed to match the time frame out of the cameras that were in the boxes (they kept all of their cameras). I immediately guessed that it was also the camera because it was the best out of all of the cameras I found, and from what I was told, was used the longest. The other cameras were of the cheapo instamatic variety and while I'm sure in trained hands they could do wonders, the slides that I came up with just had this quality to them that I don't see happening with an instamatic. I know nothing about the camera, just that it feels expensive as hell, may have seen an earlier owner, and was made before I was born
tonelok fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jul 10, 2010 |
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Jul 10, 2010 06:07
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I know nothing about this one - it's a full-frame slide that was in a batch of slides I picked up off of ebay a while back (and I feel kind of bad because I ended up with a bunch of somebody's wedding, birth, vacation, etc. slides and have no idea who they are). Many of the slides were decent for somebody who probably had a mid-range or low-end camera, or didn't know how to handle an SLR - Many of the slides are poorly composed, or the lighting was off, etc. Click here for the full 1900x1301 image. Heavy infrared cleaning, Restore colors, Restore fading, Light grain reduction, Sharpening:  Click here for the full 1900x1301 image. These others, who knows. I've reduced quality/size even more than above since I don't want to strain waffleimages  Click here for the full 1795x1900 image. Medium infrared cleaning, Restore colors, Restore fading, Light grain reduction, Sharpening, White Point set to 1:  Click here for the full 1795x1900 image.  Click here for the full 1800x1227 image. Medium infrared cleaning (should have went heavy - check the sky), Restore colors, Restore fading, Light grain reduction, Sharpening, White Point set to 1:  Click here for the full 1800x1227 image. I bumped up the white point/brightness values because this was shot under fairly crappy lighting.  Click here for the full 1700x1139 image. Heavy infrared cleaning, Restore colors, Restore fading, Light grain reduction, Sharpening, tweaking of Brightness/White Point:  Click here for the full 1700x1139 image. The above is what I feared - a poorly shot photo with heavy infrared cleaning, check the Solarcaine advertisement, around her sunglasses, and the pants of Mr.  - there's some lost detail. On the other hand, it does wonders for cleaning up the sky - compare the with and without. This was a problem slide (along with the people sunbathing a few photos up) because it was dark and I was trying to change things up in VueScan to bring out some the details, but that brings about its own set of problems. I've read some people do a scan with heavy cleaning, and then do it with medium, and basically mask out the sky from the heavy cleaning and copy it into the one with medium cleaning - basically use heavy infrared cleaning where it works best. I'm not sure where the blue lines came from - they are on the slide.Keep in mind some of these could be great images if you spent 10 minutes on them in Photoshop after scanning them. Whoever took the photos above did a decent job, given that they didn't appear to be working with a high-end camera. If you're lucky enough to work with some photos shot by somebody who knows what they are doing, you can get excellent results that save you a helluva lot of time - see the dolphin and beach photo a few posts up as an example. tonelok fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Jul 10, 2010 |
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Jul 10, 2010 12:21
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Mannequin posted:I've had this in my B&H cart for the last couple of days, but haven't bought it yet because I'm still considering how much film I will continue to shoot in the future. Question for you: how do you like it compared to your V750? That's quite a bit more money, does it scan better than the PlusTek? Ultimately I want something that yields the best results, speed isn't really a concern of mine. I think the 7600i cleans better on heavier settings than the 4990. There are limits obviously, based on the quality of processing and the skill of the photographer. If you are scanning film that was recently developed, I think it's less of an issue. I picked some worse case scenarios above - these are slides that are 40+ years old in some cases, and were definitely brought out multiple times and shown in projectors, which means they picked up plenty of dust/debris and scratches. With recently developed film/slides, I think it's less of an issue - in theory you are probably taking better care of your film than the people who had the slides I posted above, and so you have less of a need for the cleaning/restoration. You're probably a better photographer than the guy who took the lower-quality vacation slides (not the dolphin/beach slides, but the ones below those two) and have even less of a need for adjustments. You could probably get by with a flatbed or a cheaper scanner as a result. I will say that the trays for the 7600i are a lot nicer than the 4990. I don't know about the trays for the V700, but my trays for my Epson 4990 are not as tight/secure, and I think the film holder in the 7600i in particular does a better job at holding it flat. quote:Also, let's say I continue shooting film. In the long run I suppose it would be cheaper scanning my own negatives/slides a on per-roll basis as opposed to just getting the lab to do it. Hmm, wondering if I should still go ahead and buy this. I would have to get the one with the software though so it would be quite a bit of money. If you can only get one scanner though, grab the V700 and order the third-party holders from here: http://www.betterscanning.com/ Also still pick up VueScan. The Pro version of VueScan gets you free upgrades for life. This is a crappy time to be getting into scanning if you are looking to buy new - the scanner market has all but collapsed, especially the dedicated film/slide scanners, and so very few companies are left. A lot of people are not putting the better scanners on the used market because there is nothing coming out to replace them, unless you go really high-end. I'll try to write a more coherent review tonight and post more samples, including some film samples.
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Jul 10, 2010 21:39
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Demon_Corsair posted:I would love to get a little dedicated scanner, but I shoot a lot of medium format. http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/ProductDetail.page?pid=9237#tab-ProductDetail.ProductTabs.TechSpecs Comes with: * FH-835M 35mm Mounted Film Holder * FH-835S 35mm Strip Film Holder * FH-869S 120/220 Strip Film Holder But you can find other film holders that are optional. You're pretty much out of luck on dedicated scanners handling anything other than 35mm/slides unless you are willing to pay that kind of money. If you are, the Nikon would probably work just fine with Windows 7 - VueScan has its own drivers for it, and Microsoft's website shows at least 32-bit compatibility for Windows 7. It is Firewire though. If you don't have the budget, the Epson V700 would probably do much of what you want. The V750 is more expensive, but offers a fluid mount, but getting into fluid mount is out of my league. e: The one good thing about these, is that if you decide or need to sell it down the line, it'll hold most of its value if you take care of it. You might even get more than what you paid, since they aren't making those kinds of scanners in that price range anymore. If you are on a tight budget (under $300), try these: CanoScan 8800F: http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CS8800/8800F.HTM Epson V600: http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/V600/V600.HTM tonelok fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jul 13, 2010 |
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Jul 13, 2010 17:40
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IOwnCalculus posted:For the record, Amazon has a packaging feedback feature where you can bitch about this very thing and hopefully prevent it from happening to anyone else. quote:I recall reading your posts on scanners earlier this year and I recall them playing a lot into our decision to buy an Epson V700, which has kicked rear end so far, so thanks Since Microtek and some of the others have left the North American market, and since HP and Canon have just concentrated on the low-end market, you'd think that anybody introducing a "prosumer" scanner or whatever you want to call it, in the $500 - $600 range would rake in the money at this point.
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Jul 13, 2010 17:43
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I don't think it'll die completely - I think what you're seeing with the all-in-one scanner/copier/printers for under $150 is what you'll get, especially now that people are picking up on the "scan your receipts/etc. and ditch the physical copies" stuff. Ask around your friends and families and you'll find a lot of people with a ton of prints/negatives in the closet somewhere and eventually somebody will digitize it. But time is running out. Epson will probably release one last prosumer scanner or whatever, and that's iffy. It's unfortunate that Microtek blew it with the ArtixScan F1 and then got out of the US markets. That thing had auto-focus and glass-less scanning - film was mounted in trays that were inserted underneath the flatbed scanner, with no glass between the film and the scanner camera that auto-focused on the film. http://www.filmscanner.info/en/MicrotekArtixScanF1.html
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Jul 16, 2010 16:28
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Scanners the Achilles Heel (from March of this year) - rant about how it would benefit Kodak to release a solid $500 scanner. Follow-up article about the above article: http://www.michaelsebastian.com/blog/?p=2101 quote:Stephen Schaub, over at Figital Revolution, has laid down some common sense about film scanners today that I hope Kodak runs with. Check out his audio-blog entry and get it straight from him, if you’re not already following The Figital Revolution in your feed reader. You should be, if you love film and fine-art photography. quote:If a color-film lover could buy a high-quality dedicated film scanner at least as good as the Nikon 9000 for $500, it would be a game changer. Spend $500 for a scanner that keeps your Hasselblad or Mamiya 7 from fading to obsolescence? Or drop $8k for the latest rapidly-depreciating Canikosony DSLR body, merely to achieve a result arguably no better than a good scan of a MF film negative made with the gear you already own? Faced with this arithmetic, a lot of FA’s who are on the threshold of pulling the digital ripcord might reconsider film. People mention in the comments about how many bidders can end up on used Nikon or Minolta film scanners, and I've seen it first-hand.
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Jul 16, 2010 16:43
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Martytoof posted:Once Epson and the rest stop working on dedicated film scanners I'm sure we'll see a thousand-dollar device made by some small company come in to sweep up the remains. Epson, HP, and Canon, dedicated flatbed scanners probably don't pull in much revenue overall, and the all-in-one scanner/printers allow them to make buttloads off of consumables anyways. Plustek on the other hand, lives and breathes scanners.
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Jul 16, 2010 18:02
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unixbeard posted:You can also run the other parts through google translate for german to english Another good European site: http://www.photo-i.co.uk/ They have some top-notch forums discussing scanning/printing. On a related note, Canon just announced a couple of new dedicated scanners: http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/about_canon?pageKeyCode=pressreldetail&docId=0901e024801c30e5 These are budget scanners but are supposed to offer improved capability, and are their thinnest scanners yet. One more year that dedicated scanners are still registered for some companies
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Jul 23, 2010 17:56
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If it's a flatbed scanner that supports slides, it'll have a light in the lid to backlight the slides. Are you scanning on a scanner without a light in the lid? If so, I'm surprised if you got anything useful out of them, but could see where darker ones would not work at all.
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Aug 21, 2010 22:46
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Watch for companies that ship overseas. I would not trust valuable photos or film to places that ship overseas because they are shipping as cheap as possible and maybe shipping to India or China, and if something happens, you've lost some irreplaceable items. I would look for local companies if possible, and if not, for companies that make it a point about not shipping them overseas. I would also look for companies that make it a point that tracking/insurance is involved so that you aren't left wondering if your photos made it there or are making their way back. You mention that you don't want to "spend a year getting them 'just right'" - guess what, unless you pay an arm and a leg, they aren't going to make sure the color is perfect or that blemishes have been removed or that they are print-ready. They are going to slap it on the scanner, scan and save, slap the next one down, scan and save, and then when they are done, they might whip through the images to make sure that all are present and didn't have problems saving, and then toss them on a CD or DVD or batch upload them to your server and send you everything back. A lot of times the person scanning is probably the lowest man or woman on the totem pole in a photo lab. Scanning is actually the least amount of labor a lot of times. If you want them to be print-ready, you probably would have to pay extra. In your shoes, if you have some knowledge of photo editing, I would buy an Epson V600 for $200, scan them with the archival settings, and then sell the V600. You'll get probably half your money back easily so you'll be out $100 bucks, and the scanning part is not labor intensive if you have it next to your computer and you spend any amount of time there. 10 scans a night could be knocked out in 15-20 minutes a night over the course of a month. I've banged out 200-300 scans over a weekend no problem. It's everything after the scanning that takes up the majority of time.
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Aug 25, 2010 22:42
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